by Kim Wright
“Welles,” Rayley said. “We both know that I saw nothing at all.”
5:34 PM
The first staircase they managed well enough. The second was so alarming to behold that Trevor insisted Rayley take hold of his jacket and let him guide the way. But the steps were too tightly wound to allow them to ascend as a unit, so they were forced to retreat, losing both time and a bit of nerve in the process. It was ultimately decided that Rayley must climb on his hands and knees, with Trevor following close behind. Their process thus was painfully slow and methodical and Trevor paused once, halfway up, and dared to look around him, before quickly concluding that Rayley was fortunate to be unable to grasp the full reality of their present situation.
But then they were there. A small landing with a parapet, which stretched around three sides of a room. A room, yes, but one designed to resemble a chateau in miniature, with arched windows and a blue door. Trevor edged toward it while Rayley, wishing it was permissible to still crawl, cautiously followed. What does one do in such circumstances? Knock? Instead, Trevor turned the knob and let the door open of its own accord, which, thanks to the wind, it most definitively did. The two men peered inside.
The first thing Trevor saw was the Whistler. The painting was so large that it commanded an entire wall of the room, stretching nearly from the elaborate molding of the ceiling to the plush Persian carpet on the floor.
The first thing Rayley saw was Isabel. She was wearing the same teal-colored gown she had worn for the portrait, her hair styled in the same way. She had not assumed the same pose however, but was rather sitting on a small divan. She looked up at him without surprise, as if he was arriving for an assignation they had planned long ago.
“Detective,” she said. “Please come in. And close the door. It’s so windy at night.”
“Isabel,” Rayley said, his voice quivering. “I have come to take you back to London.”
“London?” she said, wrinkling her nose. “What waits for me there? Look around you. What woman in her right mind would abandon all this for dreary London?”
She had taken one of the posters of Henry’s face, Trevor noticed, and had fastened it in some manner to the bottom of her own portrait. Isabel followed the trajectory of his gaze, and smiled.
“Behold our family portrait,” she said. “Courtesy of Armand Delacroix. I take it that you are a detective too? Scotland Yard, no doubt. You all have somewhat the same look.”
“Delacroix has been arrested,” Rayley stubbornly continued. “You don’t have to fear him anymore.” He too had glanced toward the spot where the poster was fixed but, based on his utter lack of reaction, Trevor suspected he did not recognize it as Henry’s face. It was hard to ascertain exactly how much Rayley was managing to take in of this strange room and what, if anything, he was beginning to understand. Signs pointing toward the truth lay all around them, for even three days on the street had forced cracks in Ian’s façade. Without cosmetics, his skin was coarse and stubbled. The finely arranged dome of dark hair was ever-so-slightly off-center and the teal dress was ill-fitting, as if whatever undergarments were needed to sustain the illusions of femininity had been lost somehow in the transition. Ian looked at Trevor in defiance, clearly attuned to his thoughts, and picked up a pair of velvet gloves from a mother-of-pearl table at his side, pulling them on over his work-worn hands.
“Isabel,” Rayley said. “Did you hear what I said? Armand Delacroix is in custody.”
“That’s not his real name, you know,” Isabel said, with a light and tinkling laugh. “I remember the night we devised his French identity. We were back in that dreadful little cottage in Manchester with his wife Janet. I like her very much, you know. Charles said he must have a new name and Janet suggested ‘Armand,’ which means ‘soldier.’ Did you know that? But of course you don’t speak French.”
“You said you wanted to go home,” Rayley said. “You still can.”
“And Delacroix means ‘of the cross,’” Isabel continued. “He loved the name at once. I believe that is precisely as he saw himself, as some sort of solider of the cross.” She paused, awkwardly brushing back a strand of hair with a gloved hand. “Charles was quite religious, you know, in the beginning. It seems the worst people always are.”
“It’s over,” Rayley said.
“Yes,” she said, surprising them both by suddenly rising to her feet and moving toward the door. “No doubt you are right.” She walked out onto the parapet, Rayley feeling his way behind her and Trevor remaining in the doorway, one hand braced on each side of the frame. They would have to persuade her to come with them of her own volition, he thought. They could scarcely drag her down that damned staircase against her will.
“Look,” Isabel said, pointing in the distance. Rayley obediently turned his head, and Trevor also peered cautiously from the doorway. “It’s the last time we will ever see Paris like this,” she said. “For in two weeks the crowds shall come in earnest and it will all be changed. The world as I know it will come to an end.” She paused thoughtfully and then added. “My brother is dead, you know.”
“Yes,” said Rayley. “It’s a horrible shock, a dreadful shock, but life does go on, just as they say it does, that awful cliché. There’s a woman on our team, you know, just last year she lost her sister…”
“I will learn to love again, is that what you’re saying?”
“I don’t know what I’m saying,” Rayley said. “Just let me bring you back to England and I promise you it shall all be settled there.”
“Very well,” she said. “But we must take the portrait.”
The portrait? From the doorway, Trevor winced. It behooved them to keep her calm, but this was a fine request. They could scarcely steal a Whistler from the Eiffel Tower and they couldn’t transport the monstrous thing down that snake of a staircase if they tried. The last five minutes had been confusing indeed, but there was one thing of which Trevor was sure. The Whistler portrait of Isabel Blout would remain at the top of the Eiffel Tower until the end of time.
“Henry’s portrait,” Isabel elaborated.
“Ah yes,” Rayley said with obvious relief. “Trevor, will you fetch Henry’s portrait from the wall?”
All right, so she’s gone mad and we’re probably right behind her, Trevor thought. But whatever it takes to get the three of us back down to the ground…
He had turned to go back inside, to pull the damn poster from where she had affixed it to the Whistler when it occurred to him, almost immediately, that he had been played. Isabel was no fool. She knew that Rayley was half-blind but that Trevor saw everything, and she had found a way to distract him. Rayley’s shout confirmed the rest. Trevor spun around and dashed back out to find Rayley hanging over the parapet, his toes barely touching the ground.
She had jumped, of course she had, but against all odds he had caught her. He had her hand in his and he was holding on with the strength of a man possessed. Trevor leaned over the railing too but could not reach far enough and so, praying that Rayley’s grip would not fail, he wrapped his arms around the man’s waist and tried to pull him back, in the hopes Isabel would rise with him. But moving the weight of two men, even two small ones, up and over the railing was beyond him, so Trevor dropped to his knees on the parapet and reached through the railing toward the dangling Isabel.
“It’s all right, Ian,” he said. “Give me your other hand.”
The man looked directly at him, the artifice of femininity all gone now, a slight smile on his face.
“Give him your hand,” Rayley gasped, his voice shaking, although whether from the sustained effort of holding on or the shock of a growing realization, Trevor could not say.
And then a movement, slight. Was it the wind or was it an act of human will? Rayley’s feet were both off the parapet now, putting him in danger of toppling over as well and Trevor was flattened to the floor, straining his own arm through the bottom of the railing and Ian, still smiling, shifted the slightest amount. No more th
an a centimeter.
Just enough to loosen a hand within a velvet glove.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Paris
April 30
2:12 PM
On the afternoon before they were due to depart for London, Trevor and Rayley went walking along the Seine. The Exhibition had not yet officially opened, but the crowds were growing daily with any number of enterprising entrepreneurs already on hand to serve them. Sidewalks were crowded with families, musicians playing the violin or cello, hoping for spare coins, stands selling foaming glasses of soda bicarbonate and clouds of candy floss. It was all creating a bit of a mess, Trevor noticed, items dropped here and there, the acrid smell of human bodies, crushed each to the other, the hint of decay wafting up from the swollen river. But he supposed this was the price of progress.
They covered the first few minutes of their stroll in silence and finally Rayley said, tentatively “When we are back at the Yard, shall we discuss this?”
“Not often, I should think.”
“So whatever must be said, it would be better if it were all said here?”
Trevor gave him a sidelong glance. The ordeal of the last few days had left Rayley thinner and more solemn than ever. But there was something new in him too, a sort of nervous energy, or perhaps just a story waiting to be told. He seemed to be having trouble knowing where to begin.
“I have a question,” Trevor finally ventured.
“And I will answer if I can.”
“Why do you think they did it? Not the children, or even Delacroix. Their motives are clear enough. But the clients who visited these places, who risked so much to procure the girl-boys, why should they do such a thing? None of the rest of us have been able to come up with a plausible explanation.”
“You’re asking me why someone would choose to be homosexual?”
“Of course not. No sane man would willingly choose such a fate. But the whole point of Cleveland Street was that the men who went there were not homosexual, at least not exclusively so. Most of them had wives and children, the ability if not the inclination to function within the normal bounds of society. So why would they take on this kind of venture?”
“For some men, the risk is the reward.”
“Precisely as Geraldine explained it. But this bit of dressing the boys up as women, that’s a very strange business, Rayley, the one detail that has confounded us all. If a man was aroused by the accoutrements of femininity, the hair and the perfumes and the little white gloves and the lot, why would he not simply select a real woman? Heaven knows there is a never ending supply for sale in both London and Paris.”
“These aren’t the proper questions, Welles. You remember what they used to pound into our heads at the Yard. That success isn’t the matter of getting the right answer, it’s a matter of asking the right question.”
Trevor shook his head emphatically. “I’m not sure I can stretch my mind enough to even ask the proper question. For two men to engage in sexual acts because women aren’t available is one thing….You could argue it’s a rational response to the limitations of their environment, the sort of act a Darwinist might even applaud. Heaven knows there’s a history of these types of liaisons on ships, in prisons, and in the better boys’ schools.”
“Practically an English tradition,” Rayley said dryly, stepping aside to avoid a pastry which had landed squarely in the middle of a sidewalk, much to the dismay of a shrieking child.
“Whatever do the French call these people?” Trevor abruptly asked, indicating with a sweeping hand the crowd along the promenade. “All these babbling strangers come from God knows where to stare and point and laugh too loud and smoke in the street?”
“They call them touristes.”
“Well, they’re dreadful. One can only hope they spill enough money from their pockets to make the Exposition worth it for the French.”
“They already have,” Rayley said. “The French want them to come and keep coming. In fact, the Eiffel Tower was built,” he added, realizing his words were true in the very instant that he said them, “for the touristes and not for the Parisians.”
“Indeed. Well the French may have these chattering magpies and their money. We English certainly don’t need them. What were we talking about?”
“Men sodomizing other men, I believe.”
“Ah yes. You’re sure the topic isn’t too distressing?”
Rayley smiled. “Not at all. This is the first truly unfettered conversation I’ve had since I left London.”
“Shall I tell you a secret? It’s the first true conversation I’ve had since you left London as well.”
Rayley was pleased although, being Rayley, he didn’t show it. “You were saying?”
“Well, that I find it quite within the realm of logic that in a situation where women are not available, men might be tempted to improvise and that, as you say, there’s a proud English tradition of just such improvisation. To sexually desire a man more than a woman is quite another level of thought, but I can only presume the poor bastards can’t help themselves. But to dress a boy in pantaloons and demand he pose as a girl seems the ultimate sort of perversity.”
“So what’s your question?”
“Actually, I have a theory,” Trevor said.
“You usually do.” They paused to let a battalion of women pushing prams pass and then Rayley said “Please go on.”
“The upper class, the royals and the rich. They have become so demanding in their pursuit of amusements that they must constantly seek new diversions, each more extreme than the last. I seized on the notion that night at Madame Seaver’s party when I was offered the most bewildering variety of cocktails. Mad little things, each a different color, with a different sort of adornment perched on the glass, as if humble whiskey and beer were no longer enough to intoxicate this demanding new world.”
“So your theory is that our desire for new sexual experiences may be likewise evolving.”
“In a way. It is possible I believe, for a man to become so powerful and rich that the ability to purchase women is no longer enough of a diversion. So he begins to purchase girls. And when they get tiresome, when he yet again seeks a new novelty, then it’s on to boys. I stand before you quite convinced that this is the curse of the modern world. We shall all become so jaded with sensation that nothing in itself will ever be enough to sate us. It will always be on to the next novelty and then the next, until the human race is destroyed.”
“And you concluded all this from a tray of cocktails?”
“Scoff if you wish, but there is something morally dangerous in this endless variety of amusements that our era claims to provide. Soon there will be no word for ‘contentment’ in the English language, for we shall no longer feel content and thus have no need to describe it.”
“I wasn’t scoffing. It reminds me of something Graham said, actually, the day we all climbed the tower. He said as we grow more modern we shall also be less human. He was the last person I would have expected to voice such a sentiment. I dismissed him unfairly, I see that now.”
Trevor nodded. “The mechanical hand of progress. I fear it for myself.”
“You, Welles?” Rayley said, his head turned so that Trevor did not see his smile. “You’re a gifted detective, perhaps the best in the Yard. But I’ve always thought that the one thing that prevented you from being ideally suited for your chosen profession is that you have no personal tendency toward excess, and thus you are slow to recognize those impulses in others. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever met a man who has less natural capacity for depravity.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Trevor said. “Even though I suspect you’ve just found a very tactful way of suggesting that I’m stupid.”
Rayley stopped in his tracks and weaved a bit on his feet.
“Gad. Sorry, man, we should find a bench,” Trevor said, clasping his shoulder. “Or a café, even better, and we’ll take some tea. You’ve been through a horrible ordeal and here
I’ve marched you up and down every street in Paris.”
“It isn’t that.” Rayley looked down toward the river. “I wanted to walk the city one more time before we left. It’s just that this is where they found Graham’s body.”
Rayley was a man of ceremony and Trevor remembered that back in London he had often felt a need to bid farewell to the deceased, that his final visit to the body was a way of closing the case in his mind. Under the circumstances, he supposed the next best thing was to revisit the site of the crime. We detectives are a funny lot, Trevor thought. Claiming to be creatures of ultimate logic, but in reality superstitious and full of rituals. He smiled at Rayley and asked “Shall we pay tribute?”
